Golf
for Darrin Gee '95 was love at first swing. But for
some people, hitting that little white ball into a hole across
the fairway can be frustrating. According to the Kellogg graduate,
though, golf is the one sport in which everyone has the ability
to hit a perfect shot. The secret is all in your head.

"Most
players agree that golf is 90 percent mental, yet very few
of us ever develop this area of our game," he says, from
his Spirit of Golf Academy in Hawaii. Gee noticed this in
corporate life too, working as a consultant to some of the
world's most successful organizations after earning his Kellogg
MBA. "The top performers had focus and understood how
to achieve peak performance."

After
years of coast-to-coast commuting, Gee says he was falling
behind on his game – in golf and life – and he
wanted a change. Using his MBA and the psychology degree he
earned as an undergraduate at UCLA, Gee founded the Spirit
of Golf Academy in 2000.

He
wanted to teach golfers of all abilities the mental strategies
of top athletes. Before starting the business in Hawaii, he
developed a set of guidelines for golf, which is the subject
of his new book, The Seven Principles of Golf: Mastering
the Mental Game On and Off the Golf Course. Today, Gee
has coached more than 6,000 golfers on his principles for
success.

"I
teach folks that once you decide what you want, you come up
with a plan to visualize how you will do it, and you have
to commit." He says this is true in golf and in life.
In fact, he sees golf as a metaphor for life, with the same
ups and downs.

Every
once in a while, a golfer will hit that one sweet spot, he
says. "Golf's the only sport where you can feel the same
thing as Tiger Woods when he hits a perfect shot." Not
everyone can slam dunk a basketball like Michael Jordan or
throw a football like John Elway, but everyone can hit a perfect
golf shot, he says. And that is what's so appealing for Gee.

"You
know you're capable of doing it, and it's the anticipation
that it's going to happen again that keeps you coming back
for more." – AM